Foreign Policy

calvegas04

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Much smaller force presence in the EUCOM AOR, shrink the size of the Army to support a larger Navy and Air Force, invest the Army’s savings to develop better hypersonic missiles and hypersonic missile defense, shift naval forces to Guam and Hawaii, work out an additional Forward Deployed Naval Forces presence in INDOPACOM (ideally Australia), invest in a CG-Next platform (ideally something like the San Antonio class hull form due to its excess hull capacity for power generation growth to support more powerful Ballistic Missile Defense radar systems than we currently have). Just a couple of spitball ideas.

It’s less about decreasing the overall global footprint, and more so about more acutely applying our posture and strategic procurement to effectively deter the PRC.
Solid ideas.

I guess it would help for us not the alienate our allies in the pacific as well.

 

NDVirginia19

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Solid ideas.

I guess it would help for us not the alienate our allies in the pacific as well.

My big problem is that the AUKUS Submarine deal has always made ZERO sense when you look at the realities of the Submarine Industrial Base. The new construction Virginia class has been problematic for the better part of the past decade, and major shipyard overhauls of existing submarines has been a problem for just as long. It made no sense to agree to sell 3-5 Virginia classes when our own fleet of operational boats are being pushed to the max to meet GCC needs around the globe. It's a great idea in theory, but given that the Aussies are going in with the Brits on their Astute replacement project, I think it is way less important that they get 3+ Virginias and instead keep up the relationship we currently have with Aussie submariners coming and serving on US boats, establishment of a new US Submarine squadron out of Fremantle or some other Western Australian port, and maintain the intelligence sharing agreements with Australia for the IndoPacific. I would be more comfortable with the idea if we instead sold them later boats in the Los Angeles class if we refueled them, but I also generally reject the idea that nuclear powered submarines are that important to Australia. They can still provide the coalition tremendous value with Sea Denial in the southern and western approaches to the SCS if they based diesel boats out of Darwin
 

BuaConstrictor

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"Conceivably, Waltz, by coordinating a national-security-related action over Signal, may have violated several provisions of the Espionage Act, which governs the handling of “national defense” information, according to several national-security lawyers interviewed by my colleague Shane Harris for this story. Harris asked them to consider a hypothetical scenario in which a senior U.S. official creates a Signal thread for the express purpose of sharing information with Cabinet officials about an active military operation. He did not show them the actual Signal messages or tell them specifically what had occurred.

All of these lawyers said that a U.S. official should not establish a Signal thread in the first place. Information about an active operation would presumably fit the law’s definition of “national defense” information. The Signal app is not approved by the government for sharing classified information. The government has its own systems for that purpose. If officials want to discuss military activity, they should go into a specially designed space known as a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF—most Cabinet-level national-security officials have one installed in their home—or communicate only on approved government equipment, the lawyers said. Normally, cellphones are not permitted inside a SCIF, which suggests that as these officials were sharing information about an active military operation, they could have been moving around in public. Had they lost their phones, or had they been stolen, the potential risk to national security would have been severe."

"There was another potential problem: Waltz set some of the messages in the Signal group to disappear after one week, and some after four. That raises questions about whether the officials may have violated federal records law: Text messages about official acts are considered records that should be preserved.

“Under the records laws applicable to the White House and federal agencies, all government employees are prohibited from using electronic-messaging applications such as Signal for official business, unless those messages are promptly forwarded or copied to an official government account,” Jason R. Baron, a professor at the University of Maryland and the former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration, told Harris.

“Intentional violations of these requirements are a basis for disciplinary action. Additionally, agencies such as the Department of Defense restrict electronic messaging containing classified information to classified government networks and/or networks with government-approved encrypted features,” Baron said."



LOCK THEM UP!!
 

NDVirginia19

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Probably firing Mike Waltz. Unless you can prove intent to disclose NDI to an uncleared person, or the intent to use signal to evade the records retention, then I don't think that they could have a solid case with the Presidential Records Act and Espionage Act.
 

BuaConstrictor

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Probably firing Mike Waltz. Unless you can prove intent to disclose NDI to an uncleared person, or the intent to use signal to evade the records retention, then I don't think that they could have a solid case with the Presidential Records Act and Espionage Act.
No consequences for anyone else?
 

NDVirginia19

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It depends.

If we’re talking Espionage Act violations, by volume, no. Hillary had over one hundred classified emails on her private server, to include a dozen or so that were TS and some even contained SAP material. There’s no confirmation to what extent what Hegseth and Ratcliffe sent was classified, all we really have to go off is Goldberg’s assessment (my guess is SECRET/NOFORN) but it almost certainly wasn’t SAP material.

If we’re talking Presidential Records Act, Hillary purposefully used the personal account to bypass typical FOIA restrictions and her team deleted over 50% of the emails subpoenaed by the investigation deemed “personal” that the FBI later found to include thousands of other work emails. So far, there is no evidence to suggest that Signal was used to bypass the PRA (though some could surely come to light).

Considering that we don’t know the actual content of those classified emails, nor do we have any evidence of intent from Waltz and the Trump team, this is certainly not worse than Hillary’s emails, you only think it’s worse because you know the content of the Signal messages.


And no, I didn’t think Hillary should have been put in prison.
 

Bishop2b5

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This is worse than Hillary's emails.
How is a staffer accidentally adding someone who shouldn't be in the conversation remotely close to a cabinet member intentionally subverting security laws and protocols over an extended period of time? I'm not looking for a fight or a gotcha moment. I'm asking for a serious answer. Those two things are MILES apart in intent and risk.
 

PerthDomer

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How is a staffer accidentally adding someone who shouldn't be in the conversation remotely close to a cabinet member intentionally subverting security laws and protocols over an extended period of time? I'm not looking for a fight or a gotcha moment. I'm asking for a serious answer. Those two things are MILES apart in intent and risk.
None of this should have been on Signal. It's not secure and all set to autodelete and stop an FOIA request. If they've done this once they've done this other times

Goldberg also witheld a lot of stuff from the story. Names of targets, CIA agent ID's etc. One member of the chat happened to be added WHILE HE WAS IN MOSCOW.

 
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NDVirginia19

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None of this should have been on Signal. It's not secure and all set to autodelete and stop an FOIA request. If they've done this once they've done this other times

Goldberg also witheld a lot of stuff from the story. Names of targets, CIA agent ID's etc. One member of the chat happened to be added WHILE HE WAS IN MOSCOW.
I mean I agree 100% that this shouldn’t have been on signal and it was an irresponsible medium for classified information AND on top of that having no fail safe or apparent moderation to prevent an unauthorized individual from being added. I’m just saying the type of information on Hillary’s emails was even higher sensitivity than what was likely on this signal thread. Ultimately we are probably never going to know what exact level of classification was on the thread, but could potentially find out with a congressional investigation which I think is prudent in this case
 

GATTACA!

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How is a staffer accidentally adding someone who shouldn't be in the conversation remotely close to a cabinet member intentionally subverting security laws and protocols over an extended period of time? I'm not looking for a fight or a gotcha moment. I'm asking for a serious answer. Those two things are MILES apart in intent and risk.
I thought what Hillary did was wrong. This is a completely different level of bad. Adding the journalist is a stupid mistake that is embarrassing and makes them look amateurish. The real issue here is using Signal. Hillary's emails were bad because they were housed on an unsecured PRIVATE server. These are messages about military action using a 3rd party application on a PUBLIC server.
 

NDVirginia19

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I thought what Hillary did was wrong. This is a completely different level of bad. Adding the journalist is a stupid mistake that is embarrassing and makes them look amateurish. The real issue here is using Signal. Hillary's emails were bad because they were housed on an unsecured PRIVATE server. These are messages about military action using a 3rd party application on a PUBLIC server.
I mean Signal is considerably more secure than Hillary’s unsecured Microsoft Exchange server. Completely agree it was bad for them to use it, but Signal is like the standard bearer for E2EE messaging applications.
 

PerthDomer

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I mean Signal is considerably more secure than Hillary’s unsecured Microsoft Exchange server. Completely agree it was bad for them to use it, but Signal is like the standard bearer for E2EE messaging applications.
The difference to me is this was a real time ongoing planning of a military operation. In real time. If the wrong eyes are on this we're getting people killed in real time.
 

NDVirginia19

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The difference to me is this was a real time ongoing planning of a military operation. In real time. If the wrong eyes are on this we're getting people killed in real time.
I think in this case there was a significantly larger risk to mission that risk to force, but agreed that this appears more damaging, certainly in an OPSEC sense. But we also don’t know exactly what sort of information Clinton had on her server… SAPs (Special Access Programs) are the types of things that maybe a couple dozen people or fewer are actually read on to due to their sensitivity. Given her role as SoS it very well could have been the identity of CIA agents or assets in adversarial nations.
 

BuaConstrictor

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If they've done this once they've done this other times
Clearly. This goes beyond some "accidental adding of a journalist" to a chat group. Every single person on that group should have known (and I'll wager heavy money that they DO know) that they are not supposed to be using Signal for these communications. Given that they should have known or did know and did not put a stop to it the second the messages started flying shows that this isn't the first time this has occurred.

The two options here for everyone in that chat is that they are either too incompetent to know they shouldn't have been using Signal and are unfit for the office they hold OR they were intentionally using it knowing they are supposed to be...and are unfit for office.

They should all be fired.


 
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NorthDakota

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How is a staffer accidentally adding someone who shouldn't be in the conversation remotely close to a cabinet member intentionally subverting security laws and protocols over an extended period of time? I'm not looking for a fight or a gotcha moment. I'm asking for a serious answer. Those two things are MILES apart in intent and risk.
Two unique situations but seems inappropriate to be conducting this sort of business over signal.

Perhaps the government should have an app akin to signal to facilitate these discussions without the risk of looping outsiders in.
 

NDVirginia19

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Two unique situations but seems inappropriate to be conducting this sort of business over signal.

Perhaps the government should have an app akin to signal to facilitate these discussions without the risk of looping outsiders in.
There exist chat servers and such on classified networks, but they are not as user friendly or flexible as signal. I had the same thought though.
 

NDVirginia19

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Also Gabbard and Ratcliffe testified under oath that no classified information was shared in those Signal threads. Looks like the onus is on Congress to subpoena the record of the signal chat from Goldberg. Or he could release them himself (previous SCOTUS case from the Pentagon Papers seem to indicate that The Atlantic has the right to publish them). If the Trump admin seeks an injunction to prevent the release, then that would be the giveaway that it actually was classified.
 
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